A Dutch initiative to produce a ´fair´ phone without child labor and a minimal environmental footprint. One of the goals is to make a phone which lasts longer thanks to upgradeable parts which will stimulate a second life in the hands of a new owner.
The first model will run on Android 4.2.2 and go in production if 5000 people actually order it for 325E ($430). Almost 13.000 people registered their interest for a socially conscious phone so it seems an achievable goal.
Fairphone works with LaborVoices, an organisation that helps workers find work with ethical suppliers, and helps companies find and deal with those ethical suppliers to build their gadgets.
The design is made by GeekPhones, so it will probably be identical to their proposed FireFox Peak model which is a 4.3" model with qHD screen.
The decision to go with Android instead of the open-source FireFox is a pragmatic one according to front-man Bas van Abel from the non-profit Waag Society. Launching a new model with strict social and environmental requirements is difficult enough without an as yet unproven OS.
Are you interested in a ´Fair phone´ or is value for money all that counts?
More info on http://www.fairphone.com/ #Tech
For me, it's both.
But that is because I can afford to be "Fair inclined" nowadays.
Nobody is going to fork over +$900 for a phone, like it or not
carbon footprint is the last thing..on go-go-gadgeters mind.
In the U.S., unless it can get itself subsidezed through contracts, it will be a very small, niche market. Most people don't shell out $300-$900 for a new smartphone, instead its priced into their contract over 2 years.
$900? Where did that come from +Stanley Oppenheimer?
Cool!
so cool
pretty cool .
Nice and cool!
+Max Huijgen Our Ethical Phone maker, is not going to use sweat labor., you're going to pay your corporate taxes, you're going to have to find/invent make ways to recycle some of the most toxic elements on earth..(Instead of sending them to China) – I would hope this phone has less gunk. The added costs of oversite and inspection/safety, not to forget some Goverments are now charging Eco tax on hitech devices on top of regular taxes…. and don't forget legal! (Bless the lawyers!) How much do you think this magical phone will cost? I would start with double. (Maybe I'm being optimistic)..this is assuming Go-Go-Gadget shopper likes the phone.
Assumptions are the Mother of all screw ups +Stanley Oppenheimer
The price has already been set at E350/$460. See the post.
Just an observation from an electronics enthusiast, exchangeable parts means more parts, larger foorprint and bulkier parts.
Also that will press the price point up.
Its a nice idea.
Though as an influencer of the environment and for labour rights Apple as done quite a lot more than they are given credit.
I think that whil this. idea is a nice one, I dont think it will result in volumes large enough for them to be able to make damands for change in the industry in the same way as Apple has.
This is a cool idea. If I were buying a smart phone, this would weigh definitely in the decision. To be honest, price would be a consideration, but yes, knowing the product was made this way would definitely be something I would put in the balance.
+chris vighagen +Susan Stone at $460 / 350E the price is lower than most popular smart phones nowadays.
Cw store
good price, yes.
You had me at upgradeable components.
4
+Abdullah Kakooli it´s not $900 but half of it.
My current phone is $200 and I do love it. For the chance to have a phone with upgradeable components would be awesome. As long as my current phone can be returned for the same price I bought it for.
I have just edited the price info. My original post said $460 / 350E, but correct is $430/320E
Dose it suit the African weather.
Good question +lake anthony sampson as one of the ideas is that the phone in its entirety can be re-used in f.i. Africa when it´s no longer the gadget darling of the West.
So the only reason this phone is so cheap..because it's not too mega-scale (yet). 5000 phones only
How are they going to keep the price down, when they have to ramp up? And nobody has actually received a physical phone as of yet….(cross your fingers)..my spider sense is tingling, yet I'm unsure why. Just sounds a little too good to be true.
It´s affordable because it´s not the latest in specs I guess +Stanley Oppenheimer When production scales up prices will go down, not up.
Ok fine so what is fone capable of, if I may ask.
Yy
Excellent idea. Now if all manufacturers would do this the whole child labor/slavery that results from our mining and manufacturing hi-tech products would begin to die. Everything should be ethically sourced, from phones to clothes to food.
I want one. It's only €300 and ethical…
ahwww i want one sooooo bad
Most people don't even upgrade computer parts any more, they simply buy a new model. What makes them think people will upgrade phones?
Why can't I reshare this?
Thank you to the Dutch once again – always thought this should be possible
+Omar Yanouri excellent question. For some reason this post was ´locked´ meaning nobody could share it.
Tnx to you I have fixed it, so you can share.
+Max Huijgen Thanks for unlocking it
+Max Huijgen, precisly why Im sceptical, its cheap.
If the partners are really involved (vodafon is mentioned) then perhaps this holds water but then this is a project made as a loss leader and more of a marketing project than a real push to transform th biz.
Considering the background of the project founders I am convinced this will not turn out to be yet another ´feel good, show green´ marketing stunt +chris vighagen
Sorry, its just that I'm a sceptical cynic at heart =D
"Upgradable" also means "repairable." I'm currently not in the smartphone market but people I know who purchase such things certainly could afford this.
Part of my objection to current smartphones is their tendency to turn into pricey garbage when dropped. A repairable phone would bump up on my purchase priority list.
I´m a romantic at heart, but my brains are cynical +chris vighagen and I have seen enough ´do-gooder´ projects like CO2 compensation for fights to be critical.
Certainly +John Poteet User removable batteries and expendable storage will prolong active life, but repairable without swapping a complete phone is crucial.
I really like this idea. I have always been dismayed that we are so wasteful as a species and that so many remain oblivious to the great amount of rubbish we pile up in the pursuit of convenience.
I'm an iPhone user and that phone is surprisingly enough repairable. Screen, back, battery, camera, microphone etc
http://goo.gl/03P0h
Not easily repairable since you do need to have stable hands and know what you are doing. But most geeks I know who has had iPhones with broken screens have been able to fix it on their own.
It is the upgradable part that I find a bit odd.
hardware upgrades are non-trivial and actually puts some interesting constraints on the phone.
Lets say that you want to exchange the CPU/ GPU/memmory (which in most phones are done by the same chip), the standard package today is a Package On Package (PoP) with BGA ball connections.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_on_package
That means that if you want to exchange it, you have to exchange all of this. Which of course means that it puts some interesting demands on device drivers and kernels.
If you want to have exchangable chips you need something like a chip carrier or a socket for pin/ball grid packets. To my knowledge those packages are anything but small an not exactly stackable.
You could probably do dome kind of PoP with ballgrids but still the phone would become quite bulky even with custom packaging.
But let say you fix all that, and can excange chips.
What about heat and power consumption.
Sure you might have processor cores that use less energy but that usually means that the industry tend to go with more computing power for the same amount of energy.
I just dont quite understand how they will solve the problems facing this design which might end up an expensive failure on the market but a cool concept phone for the geek crowd.
Id love to know what +Dave Jones of #eevblog thinks about this phone Idea.
Fully agree with your reasoning +chris vighagen but consider that we are now close to maximum screen resolutions with 1280×800 and upwards. No urgent reason to upgrade from there.
So you could swap the complete logic board while keeping screen, battery, antennas, casing, etc. Feasible and it would diminish the ecological footprint of the phone over its life-cycle considerably.
Yes that is one way of solving the problem of upgrading the phone i presume.
But im not so sure about the ecological gain of that.
It kind of irks me that there is no infomration about how they intend to do it, just a lot of talk about enviromental issues.
I do think that what we need is a better way of recycling phones and all forms of high tech gear as they contain a lot of toxic waste and it would be interesting to se how much of the rare earth elements and other materials one can recycle.
To be perfectly honest, I think that this phone while a cool project, wont have a large enough enviromental impact. I want them to succeed it's just that I am quite cynical about the industry, almost to the point of minsantropy. I'm in the Zizek camp on this topic of cultural capitalism =D http://youtu.be/hpAMbpQ8J7g
I guess the best we can hope for is that they find some really cool processes they can patent and then get the big manufactures to put preassure on Foxconn & Friends to go more green.
Better ways? They don't get much better than this. If the problem is price, you probably mean 'cheaper' ways. If so, it's not clear or obvious which 'ways' you are referring to?!
+Ross Golder cheap is not a bad word.
infact the best motivator for going green is if it is possible to reduce cost and gain a larger profit margin.
As for slave labour and childlabour in factories; chinas Foxconn and Huawei, are investing in more automation and robots to replace workers. Foxconns latest factory has a fraction of employees and rely on advanced automation almost entirely.
When it comes to soldering, wavesoldering replaced handsoldering since it was faster, higher capacity, more consistent and use less solder.
Surface mounted devises baked in reflow ovens use less solder still.
Which reduses cost in the long run.
And all industry wants a product of great quality with the least amount of rawmaterials used. Which is why plastic has replaced metal and wood in many applications.
The Reduction of Hazardous Substances Act in the EU (RoHS) has banned lead from consumer electronics and most industries (exceptions if I am not misstaken are aerospace and military industries). This has greatly reduced the amount of lead in the environment at the cost of a lot of problems in the industry, which still have not quite been solved.
Mostly problems with the higher temperature when soldering that can damage sensitive components. bad solder joints and tin whiskers causing short circuits. This affects the MTBF, cost of production and creates potentially more waste.
The reason the industry was less than pleased with RoHS was that it didnt reduce costs for the industry and that it affected quality of the end user products in a potential loss in quality.
Was it worth it in the long run?
_Yes I think so. _
because if you force a 3rd party producer to be RoHS compliant they may just have to convert their entire production line to be in compliance and products for the interior markets in china have a ripple/trickle down effectcon its environ.
+Liz E you're right if you choose not to have a smartphone at all. But if you want/need one you'd better take the best (slave free etc.) available. If you chose this one then, it's cheaper than a similar Apple /Samsung/ Htc/…
Here the cost of data plans become much cheaper if you buy your phone apart from the plan. Most people can't afford that, so they take an expensive data plan that includes the costs of a new phone.
Unfortunate that the team members from fairphone don´t chime in.
The confusion about costs stems from the US habit of subsidizing phones. Americans are not aware of the real costs. In Europe more and more people buy their phones directly instead of paying per month.
Two iPhones 5 would cost you about 1300E / $1700
#PagePhotoViewCounter Views of this post: 27318
Max, you make a good point. In the USA the phone company usually does a wrap so the consumer only sees a monthly cost. It is complicated to tell what a good deal is. National & International coverage, hardware, software, features, durability, battery life, etc. are all part of what constitutes a good deal.
For any questions you can create an account over here : https://fairphone.webshopapp.com/en/account/register/
open a ticket and the FairPhone team will be glad to answer your questions +Max Huijgen (:
(by the way thanks for the share and the great coverage !)
Love the +FairPhone concept, but go the extra mile and use the G+ page to answer these questions.
Registering and support tickets are so 'old phone' 😉
to tell you the truth +Max Huijgen I am only another Fairphone enthusiast such as you 😉
I took the initiative of creating (and managing) this Page and I have already opened an "old phone ticket" on the website asking Joe the CM to come over here and take up the job,
Which he hasn't done yet, so in the mean time I'm in charge and I send people over to the website (Fairphone have answered all the other tickets I have opened)
:p
Too bad +FairPhone Let's hope +Joe Mier sees the light.